


I think I like you a latte

by WildWolf25



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-30 00:53:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13939089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildWolf25/pseuds/WildWolf25
Summary: If there was one thing Matt hated, it was grading papers.  That being said, if there was one thing Dr. Coran hated, it was also grading papers, so Matt usually got stuck grading while Dr. Coran worked on lessons or his research.  Ah, the freedom of a senior professor to delegate nasty grunt work to his TA...  But things picked up when he got his (read: Shiro's) coffee and a cute guy came by looking for his professor.





	I think I like you a latte

**Author's Note:**

> A short, funny thing I wrote when I realized the ship name of Matt/Lance is "Latte" (although there's not actually a proper latte in this fic, just coffee...) Matt and Coran are both alien nerds but they’re also science/history nerds and you can pry this headcanon from my cold dead hands.

If there was one thing Matt hated, it was grading papers.  That being said, if there was one thing Dr. Coran hated, it was also grading papers, so Matt usually got stuck grading while Dr. Coran worked on lessons or his research.  Ah, the freedom of a senior professor to delegate nasty grunt work to his TA. Not like Matt had his own research to do, or his dissertation to write, or his own grad-school coursework to complete.  Why bother doing any of that when he could be reading papers by students who were clearly only taking this class to fill some sort of credit and had no actual interest in anthropology? Oh right, because it paid.  Not well, but better than nothing (and theoretically, it “paid in experience”, or so the university liked to say. Matt was pretty sure that was the same thing feudal lords told their serfs about farming experience in the eighteenth century).

Matt sighed and rested his chin in his hand, aching eyes scanning the essay in front of him.  He could not believe he had just read the sentence “ _ Erich von Daniken’s theories, while interesting, are largely problematic _ ” with his own two eyes.  Oh boy, three of the worst words to use in an academic essay; ‘interesting’, ‘large’, and ‘problematic’.  Armed with a red pen, he added an umlaut over the ‘a’ in  _ Däniken  _ \-- it was in their textbook, for Pete’s sake -- and circled the entire sentence, which had the audacity to be the last sentence of the conclusion paragraph.  In the margin, he was tempted to write “ _ what in the nine circles of Hell is your point??? _ ” but settled for writing “ _ expand _ ” instead.  

He wasn’t getting paid enough for this.  

Matt sighed heavily and reached for the next essay.  He felt his faith in humanity slipping as he read through the introduction.  Oh goodie, another person who had signed up for Dr. Coran’s course on distinguishing pseudoarchaeology from actual archeology under the impression that the course was in favor of pseudoarchaeology.  Not that Matt completely dismissed the notion of life outside of Earth, of course (the belief that Earth was the  _ only  _ planet capable of life was simply anthropocentric, he thought), but he knew better than to think aliens built the pyramids or Stonehenge.  If he had to read one more paper discrediting ancient peoples’ innovation…

A knock on the doorframe startled him out of his thoughts.  Matt looked up to find a young man with a backpack slung over one shoulder hovering in the doorway to the anthropology department’s TA office.  

“Hey, sorry to bother you,” the guy said.  “Do you know where Dr. Coran’s office is?” 

“Room 507,” Matt replied.  “Straight down that hall behind you, second-to-last one on the right.”  

“Thanks.”  The guy looked like he was about to leave, but hesitated.  

Matt raised an eyebrow.  “Did you need something else?”  

“No, sorry,” the guy shook his head.  “You just… you look familiar.”

Matt blinked.  “I do?” 

“Yeah,” the guy tilted his head.  “I can’t think of where I would have seen you, though…” 

“You mean besides on campus?”  Matt asked. 

“Hmm, could be that.”  The guy said thoughtfully.  He still hadn’t left yet, so Matt used the opportunity to study him in return.  Oddly enough, he looked vaguely familiar, too. He was dressed casually -- not surprising, as he was a college student -- in jeans and a blue and white baseball t-shirt with an olive-green jacket over it.  His brown hair had the slightest wave to it, making it part wildly around his face, and even though his skin was dark, his eyes were a startlingly bright shade of blue. 

“You look kind of familiar too…” Matt said slowly.  “I can’t place it, though.” 

The guy opened his mouth to say something, when suddenly a door opened further down the hall and an orange-haired, mustachioed man walked out with a briefcase, heading for the elevators.  Matt pointed over the guy’s shoulder. “That’s Dr. Coran, by the way. You might want to catch him before he goes to his one-o’clock class.” 

The guy yelped and spun around on his heel, dashing after the professor.  “Dr. Coran, wait! I have my essay and the doctor’s note from Monday!” 

Matt chuckled as the guy disappeared around the corner.  He turned back to the essay he was grading, read one sentence, and decided he was going to need more coffee to get through this.  There was a coffee-maker hidden in the corner of the engineering department two floors down, but the coffee was cheap and nasty, and he didn’t feel like walking that far to get it.  He stood up and stretched his arms above his head as he strolled over to the mini-fridge in the corner of the anthropology department’s TA office, feeling his back pop at the movement.  It was a rare occasion when the TA office was empty -- senior professors all got their own offices, but the TAs were all crammed into one room with barely any space to move between the desks -- and no one was around to catch him taking one of Shiro’s precious bottled vanilla frappuccino drinks from the fridge.  Not that he would ever do such a thing (or  _ had done  _ such a thing before), oh no, not to his dear friend, of course not.  But desperate times called for desperate measures, and a lack of caffeine plus an asinine essay qualified as desperate times, in his opinion.  

He twisted the top off and took a long sip of that blessed, cold coffee as he nudged the mini-fridge door shut with his foot.  Perhaps it was just psychosomatics at work, but he could practically feel the caffeine soothing his brain as he walked back to his desk.  Or maybe it was just the cool temperature of the drink. Sitting down at his desk again, he propped his elbow up on the desk and rested the cold glass bottle against his forehead while he got back to Mister Aliens-Must’ve-Brought-Technology-to-Ancient-People-Because-They-Weren’t-Intelligent-Enough-to-Make-Wheels-On-Their-Own’s essay, repeatedly circling the misspelled word “Stonehedge” in red pen with a bored expression on his face.  

He looked up again as another knock came from the open door.  The guy from before was back. He must have returned after giving Dr. Coran his essay.  

“You really do look familiar.”  He said, crossing his arms and leaning on the doorframe.  

“Thirty-thousand students on campus and I look familiar?”  Matt quirked an eyebrow at him, amused by his tenacity. “Where on earth might we have crossed paths?  That’s a real head-scratcher there.”

“Exactly,” the guy said, undeterred.  “With so many people around, I must have seen you several times to recognize you amongst everyone.”  He put a hand on his chin, thinking carefully. “What’s your major?”

“Given that I am sitting in the anthropology department’s TA office, I’ll let you take a wild guess.”  Matt smirked. 

“Right, of course.”  The guy nodded. “Oh, my name is Lance, by the way.”

“Matt.”  He replied.

“So, Matt, let’s figure out where we’ve seen each other before.”  Lance said. 

Matt set down his pen, figuring this was more interesting than grading papers.  “Hmm, well, if you’re in one of Dr. Coran’s classes, there’s a good chance you’ve seen me handing out papers or threatening the projector into submission when it goes haywire.”  Those, along with running a couple of the seminar classes, were his primary duties. 

“I’m in his Ancient Astronomy class, Tuesday-Thursday from nine-thirty to ten-fifteen.”  Lance said.

“Ah, Shiro’s got that one.”  Matt said, crossing his arms.  He and Shiro, Coran’s two TAs, split his classes between them.  Dr. Coran was in charge of more classes than anyone in the college of Arts and Sciences, so he needed two TAs to keep everything running smoothly.  

“Huh, so it’s not that…”  Lance looked thoughtful. “Maybe in the bookstore?”  

Matt snorted in amusement.  “I haven’t bought my books at the university bookstore since my freshman year of undergrad.  Amazon’s much cheaper.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind.”  Lance said. “Then… hmm…” he snapped his fingers.  “Sal’s?” He said, referencing the dining hall on campus.

“Again, haven’t had a meal plan since I was an undergrad.”  Matt said. He was living the glamorous broke grad-student life of instant ramen and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.  

“Then where…?”  Lance frowned at him, hand on his chin as he studied him.  Matt was also curious but didn’t feel like offering up any suggestions, preferring to just watch Lance work it out.  This was still more entertaining than grading papers. He took another sip of his coffee while he waited. 

“You like coffee?” Lance asked, eyeing the bottle.

“Yeah?”  Matt didn’t see what that had to do with anything.  He looked down at the glass bottle in his hand. “This store-bought stuff is okay, I guess.  A little bland. I usually go to this little place just off campus, but I didn’t feel like walking all the way there when I’ve got all this to do,” he said, gesturing to the pile of essays to grade.  

“Where do you usually go?”  Lance asked. 

“Cafe Altea,” Matt said.  “It’s a really tiny place, you might not know--”

“I work there!”  Lance said, pointing to himself excitedly.  

Matt blinked.  “You do?” 

“Yeah!”  Lance nodded.  “Wait, now I remember you!  You’re Mister-Black-Like-My-Soul Caramel-Vanilla-Bean-Frapp!”

“I… what?”  Matt was stunned.

“You always come in during the morning rush and order the blackest coffee we’ve got, but whenever you come by in the afternoon you get, like, the complete opposite.”  Lance explained. “Your taste in coffee is all over the place, man.” 

“I… I guess…”  Matt admitted. He craved his caffeine fix in the mornings, but still found himself drawn to the sweeter drinks in the afternoons.  Suddenly he felt his ears heat up. “W-wait, you heard the black-like-my-soul thing?” Good lord, that was  _ one time _ , and he already had to deal with Shiro teasing him about it too.  He shouldn’t be held responsible for something he had muttered under his breath in a state of fatigue during midterms-week  _ months  _ ago.

“Ha, yeah, sorry about that.”  Lance rubbed the back of his head.  “I remember that day because you came in with Shiro, and I was surprised to see my TA getting coffee like a regular person.”

“This may come as a shock to you, but we TAs do happen to be ‘regular people’,” Matt chuckled.  “We’re just a bit more sleep-deprived.”

“What other ‘regular people’ things do TAs do?”  Lance asked, his smile turning just a touch flirtatious.  “Go on dates?”

Matt considered it.  Lance didn’t look like he was a college freshman; he seemed more like a junior or senior.  And if he was taking Dr. Coran’s level-300 Ancient Astronomy course, he must have taken at least two semesters of anthropology and two semesters of astronomy, a few of which were classes only offered once a year, so they couldn’t have been that far off in age, especially since Matt was only in his first year of grad school.  

“Not with students who are in their advising professor’s class.”  Matt replied, lacing his fingers together and resting his chin on top.  “Lucky for you, though, there’s only two weeks left in the semester.”

“Hm, I’ll be sure not to end up in one of Dr. Coran’s classes again, then.”  Lance said coyly. “I mean, I love the guy, he’s great, but maybe I should see how the other professors are, you know?”  

Matt chuckled and reached for a pad of post-it notes on Shiro’s desk (he was always losing his own desk supplies.  He blamed goblins that lived in the vents). He uncapped his grading pen and jotted his phone number down. “If you’re still interested in two weeks, hit me up after your final exam.”  

“Maybe I can buy you a coffee.”  Lance smiled, taking the note. 

“After that exam, I’ll probably need to buy  _ you  _ a coffee.”  Matt told him.  

“Aw man, is it that hard?”  Lance pouted. “Can’t even give your favorite barista a little hint?”  

Matt held his hands up in a shrug.  “Can’t help you there. The content of those exams is one of the great mysteries of the universe.”  

“Darn.”  

“No, really, Coran hasn’t finished making them yet.  And that’s not one of my classes, anyway.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know if you liked it! I have a [ tumblr](http://gold-leeaf.tumblr.com/) if you want to see me yell about more Voltron things. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
